Book Club Discussion | Trump and a Post-Truth World

Each month, the Shambhala employees gather to discuss a new book as part of our Shambhala Publications Book Club. After each meeting, we will be sharing the notes from our discussion with you to spark your own thoughts and conversations.

Book Description

The world is in turmoil. As populist waves roil the Brexit-bound UK, along with Europe, Turkey, Russia, Asia—and most visibly, the US with the election of Donald Trump—nationalist and extremist political forces threaten the progress made over many decades. How did we get here? And how, with so much antagonism, cynicism, and discord, can we mend the ruptures in our societies?

In this provocative work, philosopher Ken Wilber explains why there is cause for hope. He lays much of the blame on a failure at the progressive, leading-edge of society. This leading-edge is characterized by the desire to be as just and inclusive as possible. This is all evolutionarily healthy; what is unhealthy is a creeping postmodernism that is elitist, “politically correct,” and that looks down on “deplorables.” Combine this with the techno-economic demise of many traditional ways of making a living, and you get an explosive mixture. As Wilber says, for some Trump voters: “Everywhere you are told that you are fully equal and deserve immediate and complete empowerment, yet everywhere are denied the means to actually achieve it. You suffocate, you suffer, and you get very, very mad.”

Questions for Discussion

In practical terms, how do we introduce growth hierarchies? How do we teach interior growth in our society and schools?

To what extent does green, which is pro-education, already do this? To what extent does it not?

In terms of the 60% of those at the ethnocentric level—how do we take the steps Wilber says are necessary for green to heal and lead—include the “deplorables” in the dialogue, see the world for their point of view, make room from them in their world?

“Boomeritis might die only when the Boomers die. But seeing the Millennials adopt many [Boomer ideas and values], sometimes in even more extreme forms, it doesn’t look like death is anywhere near strong enough to get rid of a really bad thing.” Discuss.

Wilber is hopeful for the future. Activating amber and orange, Trump is evidence of an evolutionary self-correction to green’s brokenness, prompting analysis and repair. Do you share Wilber’s optimism?

Chapter Notes

Chapter One: Self-Correction at the Leading-Edge

The leading-edge of cultural evolution today, the “growing tip,” is “green.”

“Performative contradiction”: green claims there is no single truth, except for the truth of that claim. Green is doing what they say cannot and should not be done.

Culture steps back (evolutionarily) to a sturdier stage of development: egocentric, ethnocentric, etc.

Notable Quote:
“When the leading-edge has no idea where it’s going, then naturally it doesn’t know where to go. When no direction is true (because there is no truth), then no direction can be favored, and thus no direction is taken.”

Thus, the “basket of deplorables” are uncomfortable with worldcentric values “not because they fully see and loathe them, but because they do not (and cannot) see them in the first place.”

Green shouldn’t view all individuals in an egalitarian fashion, because the ethnocentric and lower levels do not favor green goals of equality for all: they don’t want everyone treated fairly to be treated the same.

Chapter Seven: Where Do We Go from Here?

Green must self-heal and self-correct.

Address problems with the three major tenets of postmodernism: contextualism (no universal truths), constructivism (all truth is not given, it is constructed), and aperspectivism (there are no ahistorical, pregiven, priviledged perspectives anywhere).

Green is rightly concerned about dominator hierarchies, but the only people who engage in them are those who are at the very lowest levels of growth hierarchies—the selfish (egocentric) and special group-care (ethnocentric) levels.

Green’s rejection of all hierarchies destroys not just the problem (dominator hierarchies) but the cure (growth hierarchies).

Notable Quotes:

“Introducing growth hierarchies—in literally all areas where real growth and development is occurring (which is most of them)—would allow green to take up some actual conception of what direction means: not only a horizontal increase in aptitudes for all, but a vertical increase in attitude for all.”

“That interior growth in consciousness and culture is the actual path to our cherished goals of a real diversity and true inclusivity.”

“[Green is] ignorant of the interiors of those whom they are trying to evolve, because green is ignorant of their developmental interiors as well.”

Chapter Nine: The Lessons Green Must Learn

The path forward involves:

Green must understand and include amber and orange. Reverse its hostility to every previous stage of development.

“Aperspectival madness” must be rethought and rejected in its many forms.

Ease “hyper-sensitive” green regulations that are killing orange business (small business) to help employee “victims.”

Include orange free speech—don’t merely transcend and trash it.

View amber “deplorables” not as actively making decisions out of free choice, but as coming from a developmental level stage one doesn’t choose, but grows out of.